Creativity researchers have long paid careful attention to individual creativity, beginning with studies of well-known geniuses, and expanding to personality, biographical, cognitive, and social-psychological studies of individual creative behavior. Little is known, however, about the everyday psychological experience and associated creative behavior in the life and work of ordinary individuals. Yet evidence is mounting that such individuals can be responsible for important instances of creativity and innovation in the world: open innovation, user innovation, and citizen innovation. Research into this phenomenon could do much to advance the study and practice of creativity.

Fixed differences loom smaller when compared to large differences. We propose a model of relative thinking where a person weighs a given change along a consumption dimension by less when it is compared to bigger changes along that dimension. In deterministic settings, the model predicts context effects such as the attraction effect, but predicts meaningful bounds on such effects driven by the intrinsic utility for the choices. In risky environments, a person is less likely to exert effort in a money-earning activity if he had expected to earn higher returns or if there is greater income uncertainty. In intertemporal consumption, relative thinking induces a tendency to overspend and for a person to act more impatient if infrequently allotted large amounts to consume than if frequently allotted a small amount to consume, or especially the greater the uncertainty in future consumption utility.